Ted Bundy: Falling for a Killer was one of the most impactful crime documentary series I’ve ever watched. It’s a simple reframing that completely changed how I see serial killer stories. We tend to make the killer the main character. Falling for a Killer made Bundy’s victims the main characters. Instead of exploring the history, quirks, masks, and fantasies of the deranged person who committed calculated murders, the series explored the lives, loves, and herstories of the women he stalked and murdered, and the woman who loved him and brought him into her home to help raise her daughter. It’s more empathetic but also more disturbing, because instead of two-dimensional photos and names, the women Bundy murdered become whole, multidimensional human beings who left behind grieving friends and family.
Pulitzer prize-winning photographer Jerry Gay worked for the The Seattle Times, who were interested in a man who had just been captured by Colorado authorities. It was the fall of 1977, and Bundy was awaiting his trial in a Garfield County Jail in Glenwood Springs, Colorado, where Jerry Gay was assigned to meet and photograph him for the Times. Three weeks later, Bundy escaped through an air duct, and the FBI looked into whether Gay had helped him in some way.
These photos capture both the charisma Bundy exuded, but also the depravity. It’s in his stare. You can feel the superiority coming off him in waves. It’s almost like these photos launched the obsessive cultural fascination with Bundy, encouraging us to forget about his victims, and see only him. The man who was about to escape to Florida and kill a child.
All photos by Jerry Gay.
Jerry Gay wrote the following poem about the portraits he took of Bundy:
Basic Humanity 101- Finding Forgiveness In The Face Of Darkness
To understand the purpose of our Death, we must first understand the purpose of our Life.
Finding forgiveness in the Face of Darkness.
We are prisoners of our thoughts.
How we think and what we believe are learned at home.
To find forgiveness, we must go inside our heart, and soul.
It is here we see we are all Guilty of something.
True forgiveness is never forgetting to forgive.
True forgiveness is not a measurable commodity.
By Jerry Gay
Respectfully, I disagree. Forgiving Bundy isn’t basic humanity. But electrocuting him sure was.
